Page 73 of Specters & Spotlights

“And there was a stretch in my life,” Elise continued, carefully, “where attention… wasn’t safe.”

Something in his chest tightened.

“I used to sing all the time,” she said. “Until I was with someone who hated that I could. Hated the way people noticed.”

The anger came fast—bright, immediate, ugly in its clarity. A faceless he snapped into existence in Graham’s mind and, with it, the sudden, irrational urge to do something he never did: confront. Intervene. Make sure a person understood the consequences of what they’d done.

Who was this? his thoughts demanded. Who looked at her and tried to break that?

Elise’s voice caught for a second, but she steadied it, like she’d learned how to swallow pain in public. “He made me feel like loving that part of myself was selfish. Like I was trying to show him up.”

Graham didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He kept his expression steady and his hands loose, because he could feel the running commentary in his head trying to surge forward—You deserve so much better. Can’t you see how amazing you are?—but none of it was the right thing to say in this moment.

Not when she’d just handed him something this fragile.

Definitely not the right time to tell her how beautiful her eyes were, even though the thought sat there anyway, inconvenient and true.

So he did the only thing he could do that wouldn’t make the moment about him: he stayed quiet, and he let her finish.

“But now,” Elise said, with a shrug that was almost a smile, “I sing when I feel like it. And only for audiences who don’t expect anything of me. Ghosts, mostly. And you, I guess.”

It landed like a soft punch.

Graham drew a slow breath through his nose, buying himself half a second to choose words that wouldn’t sound like pity and wouldn’t sound like an attempt to claim something he hadn’t earned.

“Well…” he said gently, “your secret’s safe with me.” His mouth tightened around the next part, not from hesitation but from how much he wanted her to believe it. “But for the record? I’d buy a ticket.”

He held her gaze, hoping—quietly, fiercely—that it was the right thing. That she could hear what he meant underneath it.

You’re allowed to take up space.

The thought settled in him, and for a second he worried it showed on his face, that he’d given away too much with one look, one breath.

Elise had just trusted him with something heavy. Something that didn’t belong under fluorescent backstage lights or between a wig stand and a workbench like it was casual conversation. And he didn’t want to be the kind of man who took a confession and immediately asked for more.

He needed to steer them back to safer waters.

Graham lifted the book like a white flag. “So,” he said, aiming for light, “is it too late to win you over with undead verse?”

Elise’s eyes sparked, the heaviness easing at the edges. “I’ll have you know I love old zombie movies,” she said. “Like, actually love them. If I ever get the chance to do zombie wigs—rotted scalp, exposed bone, weird blood goo? I will thrive.”

Graham felt himself fall a little further, helplessly delighted. This girl was something else.

“That,” he said, before he could stop himself, “might be the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

A soft chuckle drifted through the room—too close, too clear, and coming from nowhere.

Graham went still. Every muscle tightened on instinct as his eyes swept the corners: the wig stand, the racks, the shadowed doorway. Nothing moved.

Elise, on the other hand, didn’t startle at all. She let out a long-suffering sigh and spoke directly to the air. “Yes, I know you’re invested.”

Graham’s pulse kicked.

Wait—what?

Was this… a ghost thing? He’d known, in the abstract, that Elise could see them. He’d even tried, unsuccessfully, not to think too hard about what that meant. But he had not, at any point, landed on a plan for what to do if a disembodied voice laughed in the room while he was flirting.

Panic pricked at the edges of his composure, and it had nothing to do with the possibility of a ghost in the vicinity.